Racing as Team Schwantz School, the celebrity trio of 1989 AMA Superbike Champion Jamie James, 1993 500cc Grand Prix World Champion Kevin Schwantz and 2003 AMA Formula Xtreme Champion Ben Spies raced to third overall in today's 4-Hour Dunlop WERA National Endurance event at Road Atlanta, part of the 2004 Parts Unlimited WERA Grand National Finals, Suzuki Cup Series Finals and Suzuki Worldwide GSX-R Cup Final. The Michelin-shod Suzuki GSX-R750-mounted team completed 136 laps and finished four laps down to overall winners Vesrah Suzuki on their GSX-R1000, but were on the same lap and closing in on Velocity Racing on their Yamaha R1 at the end of the four-hour race.

The idea of running in the WERA endurance event had been kicked around for a while among instructors at the Kevin Schwantz Suzuki School, which is based at Road Atlanta. "Wednesday night we went and comandeered a GSX-R World Cup bike, and the main reason we did that was because it already had stainless steel brake lines on it," joked Kevin. "It's actually a bike that got crashed when they were running bikes in for the World Cup. So it was a bit bent up and skinned up anyway. We just threw some new bodywork at it. Ben showed up from VIR Monday night and was like 'We gotta do that endurance race'", and kept on and kept calling. Me and my instructors, especially Harry Vanderlinden, Jamie James and myself, were like 'Sure, we'll ride it if it gets built, but we don't want to have to work' (laughs). Jamie took off Thursday morning to get the forks rebuilt at Ohlins. Brembo had sent us some brakes for one of our school bikes, just for students to look at, and we figured this is a good use for them. We threw them on, and everybody that got off the bike said that the brakes were better than all of us."

Kevin started the race and came in during a red flag at the 50 minute mark, then went back out for almost two total hours of seat time. "For me, that's probably the longest I've ridden in quite some time," said Kevin. "Doing that endurance race in France a couple of three weeks ago, I did fifteen laps, fell off the bike, then waited for them while they fixed the bike, then did a full stint after that. Physically, today felt pretty good. Spies got on after I did, then Jamie James went out and rode, and then we threw Ben on at the end hoping that maybe we could gobble up Velocity Racing and catch them for second. They built up a pretty good lead on us with pit stops and stuff."

With the casual approach to the project, the race strategy was equally as casual. "We were still talking about what to do as late as this morning," said Schwantz. "We had a change to make to the shifter, because I shift one down, five up, and everybody else shifts backwards. We did it when we were changing the rear tire at the end of my stint. This was fun to do. The really fun thing about it was there was a complete parts truck over there, anything we needed, we had complete extra wheels, everything. Had the bike fallen over somewhere out there when we were riding it, we probably wouldn't have done much work to it to fix it. We'd either have ridden it the way it was, or we'd have just stopped (laughs)."

Jamie rode the middle stint of the race, competing in a race for the first time in six years. "The last time I raced was in 1998," said Jamie. "I was happy with my ride. Considering we just kinda pieced a bike together, a group of guys just lended a hand and we really had fun doing it. Doug Crawford, who works with me at the shop, just dove in there and we built the bike in a day and a half and we went racing. Didn't even think about it hardly, which is probaly the only reason I did it. That's what it was all about, just going out there and having fun."

Ben Spies rode twice, being thrown on with 30 minutes left in an effort to run down the second-place Velocity Racing entry. "It was good," said Spies. "Everything worked real good, the bike was still pretty much stock. We had some suspension on it, but the way they put it on is the way we rode it. I got to ride on tires with 130 laps on 'em (laughs). I tried to stay away from everyone and not pass them too close. I hope I didn't make anybody mad. It was good fun. It was good to come out and ride in WERA and ride with all the guys I grew up racing."